Positive Psychology Summer Institute 2005 Research Summaries
Jonathan M. Adler
My research is positioned at the nexus of clinical and personality psychology. Mental illness and
psychotherapeutic treatments have profound impacts on individual’s evolving sense of self and
their cognitions, behaviors, and emotions over time. Yet the nature of these influences has been
largely overlooked in the empirical research literature. In an effort to synthesize my training as a
clinical scientist with my interest in narrative identity construction (i.e., McAdams, 1996, 2001) I
have sought out research topics which actively engage theoretical concepts and methodological
tools from both fields. Broadly speaking, my goal has been to approach empirical issues of
clinical relevance from the perspective of a narrative personality researcher with the hope of
expanding the traditional ways in which these concerns are conceptualized.
In this vein, I have completed a line of work looking at unique narrative styles that are related to
depression in an effort to provide therapists with a practical tool for helping their clients (Adler,
Kissel, McAdams, in press). Using several content analytic tools, including the Content Analysis
of Verbatim Explanations (CAVE) technique (Peterson, Schulman, Castellon, &
Seligman,1992), I was able to provide further support for the power of pessimistic attributional
style, as well as empirically support a recently established easily-identified narrative style called
contamination sequences (McAdams et al., 2001), which cognitively-oriented therapists could
label in their depressed clients’ speech patterns and modify.
My current project focuses on the impact of individuals’ experiences in psychotherapy. From the
narrative perspective, psychotherapy may be conceived of as a unique experience – one in which
the individual seeks assistance in the telling (or re-telling) of his or her story such that events or
occurrences that do not fit with the on-going personal narrative, or which call into question the
established story, may be incorporated (see for example, White & Epston, 1990). In the positive
psychological tradition, I am focusing on those individuals who King (King & Napa, 198l; King,
2001) has described as living “The Good Life.” The Good Life represents the unique
combination of (1) having high subjective well-being (SWB) and (2) using complex ways of
making meaning of one’s experience, as captured by high levels of ego development (ED;
Loevinger, 1966). Previous studies of the Good Life have used narrative methodologies to focus
on the stories that these people with high SWB and high ED tell of overcoming difficult life
events. From the narrative perspective, the life story has been conceived of as a unique level of
personality (McAdams, 1996) and so these individuals have served as prototypes for optimal life
story construction. Yet the literature in this area has ignored the experience of psychotherapy, an
intentional process of finding SWB and meaning following difficult events. Therefore, I have
focused on the stories told by people living The Good Life about their experiences in
psychotherapy, in order to provide a client-centered perspective on optimal conceptions of
mental illness and healing. A community sample of 76 adults completed self-report measures of
SWB and ED and wrote the story of their psychotherapy following a semi-structured format
based on McAdams’ life story interview. The sample was divided into four groups based on their
questionnaires and grounded theory methodology was used by five coders to identify unique
narrative patterns which distinguished the Good Lifers. Several salient patterns emerged from the
data which indicate the most beneficial ways of understanding and making meaning from one’s
experiences with mental illness and healing.
I plan to continue with research in this same area, paying increasing attention to the power of
narrative processing to mediate the effect of psychotherapeutic interventions on healing.
E-mail address: jadler@northwestern.edu
References
Adler, J.M., Kissel, E., & McAdams, D.P. (in press). Emerging from the CAVE:
Attributional Style and the Narrative Study of Identity in Midlife Adults. Cognitive Therapy and
Research.
King, L. A. (2001). The hard road to the Good Life: The Happy, Mature Person. Journal of
Humanistic Psychology, 41(1), 51-72.
King, L. A. & Napa, C. K. (1998). What Makes A Life Good? Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 75(1), 156-165.
Loevinger, J. (1966). The meaning and measurement of ego development. American
Psychologist, 21, 195-206.
McAdams, D. P. (1996). Personality, modernity, and the storied self: a contemporary framework
for studying persons. Psychological Inquiry, 7(4), 295-321.
McAdams, D.P. (2001). The psychology of life stories. Review of General Psychology, 5(2),
100-122.
McAdams, D.P., Reynolds, J., Lewis, M., Patten, A., & Bowman, P.J. (2001). When bad things
turn good and good things turn bad: Sequences of redemption and contamination in life
narrative, and their relation to psychosocial adaptation in midlife adults and in students.
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 472-483.
Peterson, C., Schulman, P., Castellon, C., & Seligman, M.E.P. (1992). CAVE: Content analysis
of verbatim explanations. In C.P. Smith (Ed.), Motivation and personality: Handbook of thematic
content analysis (pp. 383-392). New York: Cambridge University Press.
White, M. & Epston, D. (1990). Narrative means to therapeutic ends. New York: Norton.
Monica Bartlett
My research focuses on the emotion system and how it impacts social decision-making and
social behavior. My work builds from the theoretical position that discrete emotions provide
individuals with information about their environment and motivate them to react in ways that
help them solve problems. For a social species, these problems include negotiation of
interpersonal relationships as well as navigation through one’s physical landscape. For this
reason I approach emotions as integral components of successful social behavior and decisionmaking. Some of my current research investigates how social emotions, such as gratitude and the
experience of being humbled, guide interpersonal behavior and decision-making.
Gratitude: Historically, psychology has implicated the reciprocity norm as a salient reason for
prosocial acts toward others. More recent work, however, has suggested that emotional
experience may play a guiding role in upholding this norm. Specifically, gratitude has been
theorized to play an important role in nurturing the on-going construction of a relationship by
encouraging reciprocity between a benefactor and recipient. Having created a reliable gratitude
induction procedure, I have found evidence that gratitude has a unique, positive effect on
prosocial behavior (i.e., costly helping behavior) compared to that of simple awareness of
reciprocity needs, as well as that of another positive emotion and a neutral state (Bartlett &
DeSteno, in press). Future research will examine how long the prosocial behavior effect lasts as
well as what consequences gratitude has for those experiencing it.
Humbled: Growing out of my gratitude research, I have begun a new line of inquiry into the
nature and consequences of feeling humbled (i.e., the state as opposed to the trait of humility). I
am starting from the premise that, rather than denigrating one’s self, humility involves positively
acknowledging the important role that others play in one’s life. Consequently, I expect an
experience of humility to foster closeness to others and to encourage cooperation. An extensive
literature search (in religion, philosophy, as well as psychology) is under way in order to create a
working construction of the humbled experience. From here I plan to investigate how feelings of
humility affect one’s interpersonal interactions.
Selected Publications:
Bartlett, M.Y. & DeSteno, D. (in press). Gratitude and prosocial behavior: Helping when it costs
you. Psychological Science.
DeSteno, D., Valdesolo, P. & Bartlett, M.Y. (2005). Jealousy and the threatened self: Getting to
the heart of the Green-eye monster. Revision submitted to Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology.
Monica Y. Bartlett
Doctoral Student
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University
Phone: 617-373-3079 Email: aarmon@earthlink.net
Stephanie Brown
My program of research is designed to explore interpersonal relations and their consequences for
mental health and illness. Results of this work so far suggest that giving resources to others can
increase longevity, lessen depressive symptoms, and speed recovery from stress. These results
challenge traditional self-interest models that guide social, health, and evolutionary
psychological approaches to close relationships, cooperation, and conflict. My work has led
naturally to the study of mechanisms that might account for the link between altruism (i.e.,
giving resources to others) and health. Below, I describe the results of my previous studies, the
guiding framework I have used to derive predictions about altruism, and I conclude with a
summary of my ongoing and future research.
Previous studies: Giving and Longevity
In a prospective study of mortality among older adults, I found that providing emotional support
to a spouse, and instrumental support to one's social network, were each independently
associated with a 30-60% reduction in mortality risk over the 5-year study period (S. L. Brown,
Nesse, Vinokur, & Smith, 2003). These giving-related benefits could not be accounted for by
other measures of participants' physical health, mental health, and personality, or by other
interpersonal variables. Interestingly, support participants received also failed to explain their
reductions in mortality risk. This finding contrasts sharply with traditional "social support"
studies that have emphasized the therapeutic value of support received from one's social network,
but that have failed to control for support given to members of that network. Importantly, we
have replicated the Brown, et al. findings in a different, nationally representative sample of
retired adults (Brown, S.L. et al., in preparation). Over a 7-year period, participants in this
sample who were identified as "caregivers" lived longer than participants who were not. At first
glance this finding appears inconsistent with the vast literature on caregiver burnout and burden,
which suggests that the stress of caregiving is associated with poorer physical and mental health.
However, the caregiver burnout literature consists mainly of studies that failed to differentiate
between stress associated with providing care, and stress due to simply living with a person who
is suffering. By controlling for this latter variable, we have exposed previously hidden positive
effects associated with caregiving.
Theoretical background
As an alternative to existing self-interest models of close relationships, I developed an
"altruistic" theory of social bonds, called "Selective Investment Theory" (S. L. Brown & R. M.
Brown, in press). Selective Investment Theory (SIT) proposes that human social bonds (between
dyads or among larger groups) evolved as emotion regulating mechanisms, designed to promote
high-cost altruism (e.g., nurturing offspring, provisioning a mate, defending coalition members).
A central proposition of the theory is that the social bond representational complex, when
activated, functions to minimize self vs. other motivational conflicts associated with altruistic
decision-making. In elaborating SIT, we emphasize recent advances in behavioral
neuroendocrinology to support the theory's central tenets. We also discuss SIT's implications for
relationship science, including comparison/contrast with the Bowlby-Ainsworth theoretic
framework, and consideration of SIT's import for social/health psychological approaches to close
relationships.
On-going Studies and Directions for Future Research
Recently, I received a Research Scientist Career Development Award (K-01) from NIMH
intended to clarify the means by which social support is beneficial versus harmful to depression
among patients undergoing dialysis therapy for renal failure. This project is designed to
culminate in the development of an intervention that emphasizes patient giving, and reduces
patients' sense of being a burden to others. Thus far, my program of work has identified 2
questions that seem fundamentally important to the success of interventions that induce altruism
in medical patients and others in an effort to improve their psychological and physical wellbeing. Specifically:
1. What are the psychological mediators of the health benefits of giving and the health costs of
feeling like a burden to others? Preliminary results of this work demonstrates that helping others
is associated with significantly faster recovery from cardiovascular stress, regardless of
experienced positive emotion, and regardless of the success or failure consequences of the
helping attempt.
2. What are the hormonal mediators of the health benefits of social contact? I have begun to
investigate the possible mediating role of progesterone as a proxy for the hormone oxytocin in
explaining health benefits of giving.
References
Brown, S. L. & Brown, R. M. (in press). Selective Investment Theory: Recasting the Functional
Significance of Close Relationships. Psychological Inquiry (Target Article)
Brown, S. L., Nesse, R., Vinokur, A. D., & Smith, D. M. (2003). Providing Support may be
More Beneficial than Receiving It: Results from a Prospective Study of Mortality. Psychological
Science, 14, 320-327.
Robert Fasman
I am entering my fifth year as a doctoral student in clinical psychology, with an emphasis on
health psychology. I enrolled in graduate study to help unravel the deepest and most pertinent
questions in psychology and philosophy: What are emotions, what is love, and what is altruism?
More important than solving these mysteries are the implications of such work. Does living a
moral, compassionate life make one happier, perhaps even healthier? If so, what are the
mechanisms behind these systems? What are the evolutionary roots behind the moral emotions,
and how do we foster them in a society increasingly geared towards materialism and self
interest?
I believe the answer to the latter question lies in demonstrating that living a noble life leads to
mental and physical well-being through physiological mechanisms that reward us for caring
about "the important things in life."
I am currently working on my dissertation, which will relate oxytocin levels in rheumatoid
arthritis patients to various measures of social affiliation and mental and physical health. Recent
research has established connections between various measures of social affiliation and health (at
least in part through down-regulation of the stress response), social affiliation and oxytocin, and
between oxytocin and down regulation of the stress response. Although several studies have
implicated oxytocin in the health-promoting benefits of social affiliation (e.g., DeVries, Glasper,
& Detillion, 2003), these relations have not been examined directly in one study.
Serum OT levels will be measured from blood samples previously obtained from rheumatoid
arthritis patients during a laboratory session. Physiological (cortisol, heart rate, blood pressure)
and self-report (mood) responses to a stress induction paradigm as well as to a relaxation
condition were also obtained during this session. Measures of affect (positive affect, negative
affect, serenity) and social support/satisfaction (frequency and enjoyment of positive events)
were obtained from daily diaries completed for thirty days prior to the laboratory session for all
participants. Depression and extraversion were measured with a self-report questionnaire
obtained prior to the diary phase of the study. This study would be the first to examine relations
between oxytocin and such a variety of state and trait-level variables that have been shown or
hypothesized to be related to oxytocin.
Although direct measures of prosocial behavior and moral living are not available in this study,
support for the study hypotheses would lend support to the possibility that oxytocin may also be
related to various constructs and behaviors related to social affiliation (e.g., cooperation, moral
values, caring for the less fortunate and for the environment). Furthermore, eventual findings
relating moral living to oxytocin as well as to health benefits may provide the impetus for social
change on a grand scale.
References:
DeVries, A.C., Glasper, E.R., & Detillion, C.E. (2003). Social modulation of stress responses.
Physiology and Behavior, 79, 399-407.
Zautra, A.J., Fasman, R., Reich, J.W., Harakas, P., Johnson, L.M., Olmsted, M.E., & Davis,
M.C. (2005). Fibromyalgia: Evidence for deficits in positive affect regulation. Psychosomatic
Medicine, 67, 147-155.
Zautra, A.J., Affleck, G., Davis, M.C., Tennen, H., & Fasman, R. (In Press).
Assessing the ebb and flow of everyday life with an accent on the positive. In A. Hogg
(Ed.), Handbook of Methods in Positive Psychology.
Cynthia Frantz, Oberlin College
I have two main areas of research, both related to the Positive Psychology movement. At the
Summer Institute, I presented my research on connectedness to nature (in collaboration with
Steve Mayer). For many years, environmentalists and nature writers have argued that humans
benefit both physically and emotionally from feeling part of the natural world. Steve Mayer and I
have developed the Connectedness to Nature Scale (CNS, Mayer & Frantz, 2004) to
operationalize this concept. Our research shows that feeling connected to nature does indeed
correlate with positive affect, feeling connected to others, and subjective well-being. (It also
correlates with pro-environmental attitudes and behaviors, a positive thing for the environment.)
Our goal now is to determine whether there is a causal link between connectedness and well-
being. We are exploring the possibility that nature can fulfill a core need to belong in some of the
same ways that feeling part of human society can.
I also study perspective taking. Most research on perspective taking (with a few notable
exceptions) has asked people to take the perspective of targets that I describe as “neutral
strangers”: people who you will never meet and for whom you have no strong motivation
(negative or positive) to understand. Needless to say, this does not describe most of the thorny,
real-world social situations that truly require understanding another’s point of view. My goal is
to extend research on perspective taking into these situations.
In particular, I am interested in understanding the cognitive processes that underlie perspective
taking. Research using a neutral stranger (Davis et al., 1996; Galinsky & Moskowitz, 2000)
suggests that we do take someone’s perspective by accessing our self concept, and projecting our
own traits upon the target. However, is this likely to be true for a “negative” other, someone we
are motivated to not understand? For example, how do we take the perspective of a convicted
murderer, or of an ideological opponent? Similarly, do we use our own traits to understand
someone we know quite well? Preliminary data on perspective taking for a negative other
suggests that we do not use our self concept to understand these people. In the future, I hope to
identify what processed do come into play.
References
Davis, M. H., Conklin, L., Smith, A., & Luce, C. (1996). Effect of perspective taking on the
cognitive representation of persons: A merging of self and other. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 70, 713-726.
Frantz, C. M. & Janoff-Bulman, R. (2000). Considering both sides: The limits of perspectivetaking. Basic and Applied Social Psychology, 22, 32-41.
Galinksy, A. D., & Moskowitz, G. B. (2000). Perspective-taking: Decreasing stereotype
expression, stereotype accessibility, and in-group favoritism. Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 74, 708-724.
Mayer, F. S., & Frantz, C. M. (2004). The Connectedness to Nature Scale: A Measure of
Individuals’ Feeling in Community with Nature. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 24, 504515.
Jeff Larsen
I do research on three general topics. My research in positive psychology investigates the
precursors of happiness. The Rabbi Hyman Schachtel (1953) speculated that, "Happiness is not
having what you want, but wanting what you have." To test Schachtel's hypothesis, Amie
McKibban and I have asked undergraduates whether they had each of 52 material items and the
extent to which they wanted them. They were asked, for example, "Do you have a television?"
Those who said "yes" were then asked to rate how much they wanted the television they had. In
contrast, those who said "no" were asked to rate how much they wanted a television. To quantify
how much people want what they have, we identified what they had and the extent to which they
wanted those things. Similarly, to measure how much people have what they want, we identified
how much they wanted each item and whether they it. Having what you want accounted for
unique variance in measures of happiness even after controlling for the combined effects of
number of haves and wanting what you have. Wanting what you have also accounted for unique
variance in happiness. Moreover, wanting what you have partially mediated the effect of
gratitude on happiness. Thus, happiness is not just a matter of having things or even having what
you want. As Schachtel suggested, it is also important to want and be grateful for what you have.
My main line of research is on mixed emotions. Many models of emotion hold that happiness
and sadness are diametrically opposite to one another and are therefore mutually exclusive in
experience. Peter McGraw, John Cacioppo, and I, however, have demonstrated that in certain
emotionally complex situations (e.g., one's own graduation day) people can experience mixed
emotions of happiness and sadness. Such results indicate that positive and negative affect are
best represented as separable processes rather than opposite ends of a bipolar continuum. In
laboratory research, McGraw, Cacioppo, Barbara Mellers and I have also shown that
disappointing wins (i.e., winning some amount of money when the alternative was an even larger
win) elicit mixed emotions: the win itself is pleasant, but the comparison with the larger win is
unpleasant.
The research on disappointing wins dovetails with my interest context effects on emotion.
Indeed, our findings demonstrate that affect is relative: winning $5 is generally pleasant, but it
can also be unpleasant depending on the alternative. In ongoing research, one of my Ian Norris
and I are examining the mechanisms underlying a well-known context effect termed affective
contrast. Affective contrast refers to the tendency for affective stimuli to be judged more pleasant
when embedded in a context of less pleasant, as opposed to more pleasant, stimuli. It isn't clear
why affective contrast occurs. Respondents tend to distribute their judgments across the response
scale equally, so one possibility is that affective contrast is the result of a response bias. A more
intriguing possibility, however, is that context influences the underlying affective reaction. To
distinguish between these accounts, we record facial electromyographic (EMG) activity over the
brow. Diminished EMG activity over the brow represents a marker for positive affective
reactions. Results indicate that moderately pleasant pictures are not only rated more pleasant
when they're embedded in a mildly pleasant context, they actually elicit greater diminutions over
the brow as well. These results indicate that context affects underlying affective reactions.
Seana Moran, Harvard Graduate School of Education: Work Commitment
My research interest focuses on differences in commitment patterns and their development
between creative “domain transforming” work and conventional “within specifications” work.
Through deeper understanding of how commitment functions and develops, individuals and
organizations can make better use of the psychic energy and other resources put toward work and
life purposes.
Most current theories address commitment in conventional work (Cohen, 2003). Using
Csikszentmihalyi’s (1996) systems model, I developed a theory of commitment that can account
for both conventional and creative work. In conventional work (e.g., doctor), roles are
standardized into job descriptions that involve efficient, quality performance, well buoyed by
predetermined standards and institutional supports. In creative work (e.g., experimental fiction
writer), roles generally focus on innovation and are less institutionally supported, and work
products (if accepted by others in the field) transform or redefine the conventions that later
generations learn (e.g., Virginia Woolf made novels organized psychologically, rather than by
genre dictates, acceptable in literature).
Commitment simultaneously involves the investment of personal resources (e.g., effort, time,
cognition, emotion, material possessions, social status) into some object (e.g., task, purpose,
organization, profession) and the resistance to divert investment toward alternatives over long
periods of time. Commitment involves the relationship between the individual and two
dimensions of a work role—the field with its social attributes and the domain with its symbolic
attributes. The person commits to a role socially by assuming a defined institutional position/job
with associated power and prestige (e.g., doctor). But the person also commits to a role
symbolically by learning and identifying with the role’s values and knowledge base (e.g.,
medical training and the Hippocratic Oath). I propose that the individual-field relationship is
dominant in conventional work, whereas the individual-domain dimension is dominant in
creative work. That is, one or the other dimension “bends” a person’s career path depending on
the commitments s/he holds.
My dissertation, which involves a qualitative analysis of life-history interviews, explores how
people naturalistically talk about work commitments—and how those commitments function
within their careers—in one domain: writing. I focus on writing because it is open to all (and
encouraged) from a young age, but few choose it as a career, especially domain-transforming
writing. Preliminary analyses suggest that commitment in conventional, genre-conforming
writing plays a stabilizing “thermostat” or identity-controlling “wedding ring” function, whereas
commitment in experimental or genre-bending work involves a more temporally complex
interplay of stabilizing “thermostat,” momentum-driving “sail,” and protective “umbrella”
functions. These different functions may become particularly important at different career
stages—training, apprenticeship, innovation attempts, field acceptance, etc.
I hope to further refine these metaphors of commitment function and use computer modeling to
better understand their dynamics. I also plan to examine commitment in other domains (e.g.,
food preparation/chef and business/entrepreneur).
Cohen, A. (2003). Multiple commitments in the workplace: An integrative approach. Mahwah,
NJ: Erlbaum.
Csikszentmihalyi, M. (1996). Creativity. New York: HarperCollins.
Kegan, R., & Lahey, L. (2001). How the way we talk can change the way we work. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass/Wiley.
Klinger, E. (1975). Consequences of commitment to and disengagement from incentives.
Psychological Review, 82 (1), 1-25.
Nakamura, J. (2001). The nature of vital engagement in adulthood. In M. Michaelson & J.
Nakamura (Ed.), New directions for child and adolescent development, 93 (pp. 5-18). San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
Passy, F., & Giugni, M. (2000). Life-spheres, networks, and sustained participation in social
movements: A phenomenological approach to political commitment. Sociological Forum, 15 (1),
117-144.
Plimpton, G. (Ed.). (1963-1988). The Paris Review writers at work. New York: Viking.
Polanyi, M. (1958). Personal knowledge. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Michael Norton
I am in interested in understanding the determinants of well-being, from the perspective of both
psychology and behavioral economics.
In psychology, my work on well-being has centered on better understanding the link between
religiosity and improved life outcomes, from health to happiness. We have demonstrated that
there are demonstrable differences between religions in terms of the happiness they offer, in two
ways. First, we measured changes in well-being by sending research assistants to religious
services of different faiths to gather pre- and post-service ratings. Interestingly, results showed
that activities such as yoga and exercise tended to offer larger boosts than any religion. Second,
we conducted a national survey with a battery of tests designed to capture different aspects of
well-being (e.g, depression, self-esteem), again finding evidence for considerable variance
among religions in the benefits conferred. We also demonstrated the negative side of religiosity:
People saw members of their own religion as much happier than members of other all religions.
At the same time, however, people saw themselves as less happy than the average member of
their own religion, suggesting that people feel they do not get as much from their religion as their
peers, which may lead to apathy.
In the domain of behavioral economics, my research investigates the psychology of investment:
How investing time, labor, and money impacts how people come to value things, from products
to people, and how that investment impacts their satisfaction with their possessions and
acquaintances. One project, for example, demonstrates that people value products far beyond
their market price when they are forced to assemble those products themselves, suggesting that
labor truly does lead to love.
Web Page: http://web.media.mit.edu/~minorton
Michael Poulin
My research addresses how people's general beliefs about the world, or worldviews (see KoltkoRivera, 2004, for a review), relate to adjustment to stressful events across the life span. I have
combined theoretical perspectives from social, health, and life-span developmental psychology
to address two primary questions: 1) How do worldviews—including religious beliefs, political
beliefs and attitudes, and beliefs about the benevolence or comprehensibility of the world—
shape how individuals adjust to stressful events? 2) How are these worldviews, in turn, shaped
by the occurrence of stressful events across the life span?
In response to my first question, I have examined two specific ways worldviews can influence
adjustment to stressful life events: through individuals' attempts to make sense of stressful events
and through the process of finding benefits in such events. With regards to making sense of
stressful events, I have found in two separate, large-scale studies that certain seemingly
"negative" worldviews (e.g., beliefs that the world is unfair or uncontrollable) can actually be
positive in terms of facilitating sense-making and adjustment (Poulin & Silver, 2005a).
My research on benefit-finding focused on perceptions of social benefits (i.e., positive societal
change) of the 9/11 attacks. I found that individuals with particular cultural worldviews—
specifically, those who were more religious or more Republican—reported greater benefits of the
attacks, particularly in the form of increased societal religiosity (Poulin, Silver, Gil-Rivas,
Holman, & McIntosh, 2005). Furthermore, perceiving benefits was associated with greater wellbeing for religious individuals, indicating that culturally-significant worldviews lead people to
interpret social change differently in the wake of trauma.
I am currently addressing my second question in my dissertation research, a prospective
investigation of stressful event-related worldview change. My preliminary results, obtained using
multi-level modeling, indicate that stressful life events are associated with lessened belief in the
fairness or controllability of the world. In addition, I have found that two factors I hypothesized
would buffer the impact of stressful events on worldviews—age and religiosity—are indeed
protective of beliefs in the benevolence of the world (i.e., that the world is more good than bad).
These results suggest that, consistent with past research, stressful life events can lead individuals'
views of the world to become less positive, but that life experience and a means for interpreting
such events can be protective of worldviews.
In my ongoing work, I am testing ideas suggested by the findings of my prior research. For
example, my work on how different aspects of worldviews influence sense-making processes
suggests that certain kinds of complex worldviews may be most adaptive for dealing with
stressful life events. My current research seeks to build on this finding in two different ways.
First, in collaboration with a fellow Positive Psychology Summer Institute scholar, I am
examining the complexity of individuals' worldviews and interpretations of 9/11 by examining
their narratives as embodied in open-ended questions in the 9/11 study. I anticipate that greater
narrative complexity will be associated with more complex worldviews and with better
adjustment. Second, I am beginning data analysis for a project examining how nuanced
worldviews (e.g., the belief that people are good in general, but that politicians are rotten) may
facilitate adjustment to stressful events. To evaluate nuanced worldviews, I am examining
completion time of worldview survey items, theorizing that the longer it takes respondents to
complete worldview items (relative to other items), the more nuanced their worldviews are likely
to be. Preliminary data from a pilot sample suggests that flexibility, thus assessed, predicts less
distress in response to prospectively-assessed stressful life events.
More broadly, I see my work in the future delving more deeply into the issues of adjustment to
stressful life events, worldview complexity, and the motivations underlying worldviews.
Potential future directions for my research include experimental studies in which motivations are
manipulated to create worldview change or manipulations are used to raise or lower worldview
complexity. I anticipate that these will augment what I see as my ongoing focus on
understanding the myriad ways in which people's worldviews influence their adjustment to
stressful events.
References
Koltko-Rivera, M. E. (2004). The psychology of worldviews. Review of General Psychology, 8,
3-58.
Poulin, M, & Silver, R. C. (2005a). Positive and negative aspects of worldviews and adjustment
to trauma. Revised manuscript under review at the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Poulin, M., & Silver, R. C. (2005b). Worldviews and well-being across the life span. Manuscript
submitted for publication.
Poulin, M., Silver, R.C., Gil-Rivas, V., Holman, E.A., & McIntosh, D.N. (2005). Religion,
politics, and perceptions of social benefits post-9/11. Revised manuscript under review at the
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
Susan E. Rivers
My research draws from a social and health psychological perspective to understand the
conditions that promote and impede healthy living in adults and adolescents. My primary
research focuses on the role emotion-related abilities, or emotional intelligence (EI), play in
effective social and intrapersonal functioning.
Emotion abilities can be operationalized in two ways: performance on tests that measure ability,
and scores on self-report indices measuring beliefs about one’s abilities. In a series of studies
conducted with collaborators at Yale and at Skidmore, we showed that measures of performance
are better predictors of effective social functioning than individual beliefs (Brackett, Rivers,
Shiffman, Lerner, & Salovey, 2006). Individuals scoring higher on a performance-based test
reported engaging in more behaviors fostering positive social interactions than those scoring
lower, even after controlling for personality and intelligence. These results are not limited to selfreports measures. We replicated these findings in a laboratory study assessing behavioral
interactions between strangers. Individuals with greater emotion abilities had more successful
social interactions and engaged in more prosocial behaviors.
In my dissertation research, I probed further into the components of emotion abilities (e.g.,
Rivers, Brackett, Katulak, & Salovey, 2006). I examined whether emotion skills are emotionspecific or general across emotions. Discrete emotions, like anger and sadness, are characterized
by their unique subjective experience, physiological arousal patterns, facial expressions, and
their influence on cognitive and attentional processes. It makes sense then that mental abilities
associated with emotions may not generalize across emotions. One study examined: (a) the
strategies that men and women used to regulate anger and sadness, (b) the extent to which
strategies differed in their use and effectiveness, and (c) the relationship between effective
regulation of these emotions and social functioning. Emotion regulation attempts for anger and
sadness differed to some extent in both use and effectiveness. In addition, effective regulation of
each emotion was associated with different aspects of social functioning. Effective anger
regulation was associated with constructive conflict resolution style, and effective sadness
regulation was associated with positive social relations. The findings suggest that global
approaches to studying emotion regulation may be limited and emphasize the importance of
moving toward a discrete emotions framework.
I am currently testing a model of emotional literacy that posits that teaching children and
adolescents the knowledge associated with recognizing, understanding, labeling, expressing, and
regulating emotions as well imparting an awareness of the significance of this knowledge in
effective personal, social, and intellectual functioning, contributes to positive youth development
(Brackett & Rivers, in preparation). In one test of the model, my collaborators and I conducted a
randomized controlled field experiment across several middle schools. Students assigned to the
intervention group received Emotional Literacy in the Middle School, a 30-week language-based
curriculum aimed at teaching emotion knowledge. Preliminary analyses show that compared to
those in the control condition, students receiving the intervention have higher grades and are
rated by teachers as having higher leadership, study, and social skills.
Relevant articles and chapters:
Brackett, M.A., & Rivers, S.E. What is emotional literacy? To appear in M.A. Brackett & J.P.
Kremenitzer, (Eds.) with M. Maurer & M. Carpenter, Emotional literacy in the elementary
school: Six steps to promote social competence and academic performance. Portchester, New
York: National Professional Resources.
Brackett, M.A., Rivers, S.E., Shiffman, S., Lerner, N., & Salovey, P. (in press). Relating
emotional abilities to social functioning: A comparison of self-report and performance measures
of emotional intelligence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Rivers, S.E., Brackett, M.A., Katulak, N.A., & Salovey, P. (in press). Regulating anger and
sadness: An exploration of discrete emotions in emotion regulation. Journal of Happiness
Studies.
Rivers, S.E., Brackett, M.A., Salovey, P., & Mayer, J.D. (2006). Measuring emotional
intelligence as a set of mental abilities. To appear in G. Matthews, M. Zeidner, and R. D. Roberts
(Eds.), The science of emotional intelligence. New York: Oxford University Press.
Julian Simmons
The major aim of my research endeavours has been the investigation of basic human emotional
function, and particularly its role in psychopathology. Methodologically, my focus has been
upon the processing of emotional stimuli in psychophysiological paradigms, particularly in the
historically neglected area of positive, or approach related behaviour and neurobiology. The
application of this research to elucidating endophenotypes of disorders of positive affect, such as
depression, also remains an important focus.
My experimental work kicked off with an investigation of the role of serotonin in the way we
process emotional information in our environment, and how this relates to changes in affect
(positive/negative). This study was carried out as part of my undergraduate degree. The design
entailed giving healthy participants the SSRI Prozac (fluoxetine) or a placebo in a double blind
design over 28 days (Simmons et al., 2000; Simmons et al, Submitted). Both behavioural and
psychophysiological measures were utilised.
It became clear early on that the effects I was finding were not necessarily serotonergic in nature
(partly due to the lack of specificity of fluoxetine for 5-HT), but none the less strongly indicated
that changes in mood were occurring in healthy adults after subchronic SSRI use. We found a
clear decrease in negative affect and positive affect over the 28 days of drug administration,
relative to placebo. Furthermore, there were significant differences in facial muscle responsivity
to affective imagery, such that fluoxetine administration resulted in increased smiling to pleasant
stimuli, and increased frowning to unpleasant social stimuli after 28 days.
In a current study (as part of my PhD; Simmons, Allen, Berger & Nathan, 2003; Simmons,
Allen, Berger & Nathan, 2004; Simmons, Allen & Berger, 2004), examining the effects of the
SSRI Zoloft (sertraline) on healthy participants, results continue to show clear alterations in
mood. In contrast to the findings with fluoxetine, there are significant trends for increased
positive affect, as well as decreased negative affect in the SSRI group. The mood scales most
strongly affected were low arousal/socially oriented forms of positive affect (i.e., increased
joviality, self assurance, serenity) and negative affect (i.e., decreased guilt).
Within this rather involved study design, genotyping was carried out (5-HTTLPR), personality
questionnaires administered, and a range of psychophysiological measures were collected while
participants viewed affective pictures. These included: ERP’s, the acoustic startle response of the
eye (a measure of aversive motivational system engagement) and the acoustic startle response of
the post-auricular muscle (the post-auricular reflex or PAR). The PAR has recently been
proposed as a measure of appetitive motivational system engagement, showing the opposite
pattern of response to affective pictures as that seen for affective startle modulation. If validated,
this will be the first measure of its kind (i.e., a reflex that increases during positive affective
states and decreases during negative) and has the potential to tell us much of the biological basis
of positive affect. Aversive responses and withdrawal behaviours associated with depression
have been well studied, within clinical, healthy and animal populations; yet, investigation of
appetitive responses and approach behaviours remains in its infancy. Anhedonia is a primary
clinical feature of depression and yet few measures exist beyond self-report. Preliminary
analyses from this study validate affective modulation of the PAR, yet more research is required
as there appear to be important differences to the affective modulation of the eye blink. Initial
findings have demonstrated that affective modulation of the PAR is not present in response to
social imagery (Simmons et al, In Preparation).
I am in the latter stages of my PhD, and hope to finish within the next 12 months or so. I am
currently working full time as a research fellow at ORYGEN Research Centre
(www.orygen.org.au). ORYGEN is the largest mental health research facility in Australia, and
has provided an invaluable opportunity to further my career. My current working role focuses on
project management for the ORYGEN Adolescent Development Study. This study is innovative
and ambitious in that it follows 250 early adolescents through their teen years while using multimethod measures across a range of developmental domains, including neurobiology (brain
structure and function), psychological (affective reactivity and regulation, cognition, and
behaviour), and interpersonal (family interactions). Despite slowing the progression of my PhD,
such work has been most fruitful professionally and personally.
The opportunity to attend the Positive Psychology Summer Institute was very rewarding in
creating an environment where young researchers could gather to discuss their work, learn and
look towards the future.
Simmons, J. G., Allen, N. B., & Berger, G. (2004). The effects of chronic sertraline
administration on the responsivity of the post-auricular reflex during affective picture stimuli in
healthy subjects. Psychophysiology, 41 (Suppl. 1), S3.
Simmons, J. G., Allen, N. B., Berger, G., & Nathan, P. J. (2003). The influence of chronic
sertraline administration on the loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential in healthy
subjects. Psychophysiology, 40 (Suppl. 1), S80.
Simmons, J. G., Allen, N. B., Berger, G., & Nathan, P. J. (2004). The influence of chronic
sertraline administration on the loudness dependence of the auditory evoked potential in healthy
subjects. Fundamental and Clinical Pharmacology, 18 (Suppl. 1), 141.
Simmons, J. G., Allen, N. B., Judd, F., & Norman, T. (2000). Serotonin and emotion: a
psychophysiological evaluation. Psychophysiology, 37, S90.
Simmons, J. G., Allen, N. B., Judd, F., & Norman, T. (Submitted). The effects of fluoxetine on
mood and emotional responsiveness in healthy adults. Biological Psychiatry.
Christian Waugh
Resilience is an extremely important psychological trait to study because of its wide implications
for mental health. For example, resilient people have less enduring grief symptoms after a loved
one dies (Bonanno et al., 2002), and score higher on indexes of global adjustment, work and
social adjustment, and psychological and physical health adjustment (Klohnen, 1996).
Fredrickson et al., (2003) found that after 9/11, resilient people reported more positive emotions
in response to the event, and these positive emotions led to a decreased incidence of depression.
Clearly, resilience is an important construct to study in order to understand how people bounce
back and thrive in the face of adversity. My dissertation studies are designed to investigate the
proximal cognitive and emotional mechanisms that may help resilient people adapt when faced
with stressors.
In my first study, I investigated the brain mechanisms that may be responsible for allowing
resilient people to adapt more quickly in times of stress in an fMRI study with an anticipation
protocol. In this anticipation task, participants are first given one of two cues: the safety cue
indicates that a neutral picture will appear next 100% of the time; the threat cue indicates that
either a neutral (‘relief’) or aversive picture will appear on the screen next (50/50 ratio). Relative
to resilient subjects, nonresilient subjects recruited more medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) in
response to a threat cue, suggesting increased processing of the emotional relevance of the cue
(Phan et al., 2004). Following the threat cue, resilient subjects showed decreased right
ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (rVLPFC) activation to neutral pictures, while nonresilient
subjects showed similar rVLPFC activation to both aversive and neutral pictures. The right
VLPFC has been implicated in invoking thoughts about and labeling negative affect, which
subsequently inhibits the generation/feeling of the negative affect (Lieberman, 2003). These
findings suggest that nonresilient people are 1. associating the threat cue with a greater
likelihood of the negative stimuli occurring; and 2. when the neutral stimuli occurs instead,
nonresilient participants fail to appropriately match their emotional response to the content of the
picture (neutral) and instead respond as if the picture was negative as expected.
Study 2 is a necessary behavioral follow-up to the fMRI study to further explore how the
differences between resilient and nonresilient people’s anticipation and expectation of negative
events may affect their subsequent response when that event does not occur. To test the
hypothesis that the increased MPFC activation by nonresilient people was because they had a
greater expectation that the negative event was about to occur, participants will guess the
frequency ratio of the aversive to neutral pictures after seeing the threat cue. To test the
hypothesis that the greater activation of the RVLPFC in nonresilient people to the ‘relief’ neutral
picture represents labeling this neutral picture as negative, participants will rate their emotional
reactions to the pictures. Finally, I will investigate whether the propensity to overestimate the
frequency of the negative stimuli will determine the degree to which the participants find the
neutral pictures unpleasant.
Study 3 examines to extent to which resilient and nonresilient people differ in their expectation
of and subsequent response to positive events. The design of Study 3 will be virtually identical to
the design of Study 2, except participants will now see a third cue (‘hope’) that indicates that
there is a 1/3 chance of seeing next either a positive, neutral, or negative picture. Resilient people
tend to score high on trait measures of ‘hope’; therefore, I hypothesize that resilient participants
will have higher expectations that a positive event will occur after seeing the ‘hope’ cue. In
addition, resilient people tend to report experiencing more positive emotions on a daily basis
than nonresilient people; therefore, I hypothesize that resilient participants may rate the positive
pictures more positively than nonresilient participants.
Study 4 examines the psychophysiology components of the resilience difference in anticipation
of possible negative stimuli and subsequent emotional response to neutral stimuli. The task
design for Study 4 will be similar to the designs used in Studies 2 & 3, except participants in this
study will be attached to psychophysiology measures (skin conductance [SCR/SCL], and facial
muscle activity [EMG]) to measure emotional arousal and valence (respectively). The goal
would be to replicate the fMRI findings and show that nonresilient participants show a stronger
SCL/SCR response (and possibly more corrugator activity) to relief neutral pictures than resilient
participants. Second, participants will use a rating dial to continuously rate their own emotions
throughout the entire task, including anticipation, picture presentation, and subsequent recovery.
In the anticipation period, nonresilient people may rate their affect more negatively than resilient
participants when viewing the threat cue, and these ratings may then predict the participant’s
subsequent emotional ratings during the pictures.
In sum, resilience is a very important construct to study to understand how people recover and
bounce back from negative events. My dissertation consists of an fMRI study, a
psychophysiology study, and two behavioral studies that attempt to investigate the psychological
differences between resilient and nonresilient participants in anticipating and reacting to possible
negative events. These psychological differences may inform the future study of resilience by
shedding new light on the proximal cognitive and emotional mechanisms that allow resilient
people to adapt and thrive in the face of significant stressors.
References:
Bonanno, G. A. (2004). Loss, trauma, and human resilience: Have we underestimated the human
capacity to thrive after extremely aversive events? American Psychologist, 59(1), 20.
Fredrickson, B. L., Tugade, M. M., Waugh, C. E., & Larkin, G. R. (2003). What good are
positive emotions in crisis? A prospective study of resilience and emotions following the terrorist
attacks on the united states on september 11th, 2001. Journal of Personality & Social
Psychology, 84(2), 365.
Tugade, M. M., & Fredrickson, B.L. (2004). Resilient individuals use positive emotions to
bounce back from negative emotional experiences. Journal of Personality & Social Psychology,
86(2), 320.
Dustin Wood
My research interests are related largely to understanding social influences on the development
of personality traits, dispositions, and behaviors. Some of my particular interests are described in
more detail below.
Role commitment and normative mechanisms for dispositional change. Meta-analyses have
shown that personality development is largely in the positive direction over the lifespan, with
sizable increases in Agreeableness, Emotional Stability, and Conscientiousness. The mechanisms
for these changes, however, are only beginning to be uncovered in empirical analyses. I am
conducting studies exploring commitments to conventional, age-graded social roles and
institutions (marriage, having children, a stable career, etc) and the internalization of role
expectations as mechanisms for personality trait development.
Additionally, some theorists consider fitting in, maintaining healthy relations, and more
generally avoiding the perception of being abnormal to be a universal human motives. The
implications of striving to fit in with subgroups or close others has been explored at length in the
social psychological and self-determination literatures, but have not been related empirically to
understanding personality change. I am currently exploring how concern with ‘fitting in’ and
‘being normal’ are related to social influences on dispositional development. This has taken the
form of looking at social influences on dispositional development within freshman roommate
pairs, fraternity and sorority members, and other relationships.
Connecting personality traits and social situations: A current concern in personality research is
how to incorporate situations and contextual information into personality trait models.
Individuals clearly present different sides of themselves in different situations. I have developed
a model named the Personality and Role Identity Structural Model (PRISM) to connect the
systematic ways people act in particular contexts (contextualized or role identities) to general
personality traits and their development. In past research I have shown that these contextualized
identities are highly related to both general personality traits and to experiences in particular
contexts, and also influence the development of people’s general personalities over time (Wood
& Roberts, in press). I am currently investigating how contextualized identities are related to
how individuals see and are seen by others within the same context, and attempting to use these
identities to separate contrasting hypotheses from self-perception and symbolic interactionist
models concerning the development of one’s general identity and personality traits.
References
Wood, D., & Roberts, B.W. (in press). Cross-Sectional and Longitudinal Tests of the Personality
and Role Identity Structural Model (PRISM). Journal of Personality.
Roberts, B. W., & Wood, D. (in press). Personality Development in the Context of the NeoSocioanalytic Model of Personality. In D. Mroczek & T. Little (Eds.), Handbook of Personality
Development. Erlbaum.
Roberts, B.W., Wood, D., & Smith, J.L. (2005). Evaluating Five Factor Theory and social
investment perspectives on personality trait development. Journal of Research in Personality, 39,
166-184.
Email: dwood@s.psych.uiuc.edu